It is well known that in order to make it possible for hospitals to serve a multiplicity of patients, the hospital rooms are often equipped with more than one bed so that each hospital room may be used by more than one patient. In certain instances, hospital rooms are provided with two, three or more beds while patients often assigned to such rooms are sufficiently ill to require the privacy of a single-bedroom; however, because of the fact that it is often impossible for a hospital to provide the number of single-bedrooms required by such patients, the practice of utilizing an individual cubicle around each bed has been adopted to at least ensure privacy to such patients at least part of the time in which they are hospitalized. The curtain is usually constructed of a lower portion which is sufficiently opaque to provide privacy to the patient and an upper portion having a porous character such as a wide mesh construction which provides transmission of light and ventilating air therethrough for the patient. In order to provide such an arrangement, however, the prior art attempts have resorted to elaborate and cumbersome techniques which are not only somewhat less than totally effective, but which are extremely expensive to produce.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,125,422 to Bosworth relates to a fabric for curtains or the like of woven construction which is intended to make unnecessary the need for doubling over the edges to provide marginal hems. U.S. Pat. No. 2,037,629 to Holgate relates to ornamental fabric curtains having a loosely woven net-like portion or panel adjacent to one side edge, and relatively close woven portions or panels on opposite sides of the loosely woven panel, one side panel being a relatively narrow edge band, so that the stitching of panels and concealment of the stitched edges is eliminated. U.S. Pat. No. 3,321,003 to Boerner relates to a hanging drapery assembly for use in hospital rooms and having upper and lower sections attached to each other. U.S. Pat. No. 3,438,422 to Tames relates to a ventilating curtain for hospital rooms which utilizes an elaborate and expensive construction to provide an upper ventilating portion, the ventilating openings of which are not subject to clogging by air-borne cotton lint normally present in the atmosphere of hospital rooms.
Most hospital cubicle curtains presently available are constructed of several sections of different woven materials stitched together, with the top section being of mesh--or open--construction. The curtains are expensive to manufacture, and the several sections thereof are usually of materials having differing dyeing and wear characteristics which is particularly disadvantageous and noticeable after several washings. I have invented an improved integral knitted ventilating curtain which may be suspended from a supporting structure to define at least one cubicle enclosure and which avoids the disadvantages of prior art curtains. My ventilating curtain is constructed according to the method of my invention, which method involves a relatively inexpensive procedure, and which may provide a plurality of curtains of unlimited length and of uniform color and appearance, while avoiding the disadvantages of prior art curtains.